‘What an end, eh?’ he said, shaking his head in great sorrow. ‘What a waste of a life, Fanny.’
‘Four lives,’ I said without thinking.
‘Four?’ said Mr Faulds, looking at me sharply. ‘I suppose you mean master and mistress? But not Millie, surely. She’ll get over it soon. Kitty will talk her round.’
Mrs Hepburn reappeared at that moment and joined Mr Faulds and me before the embers of the servants’ hall fire.
‘She’s off like a lamb,’ she said. ‘Tired herself out with all that crying, so I’ll just leave her a while and not start creaking and splashing until she’s deeply gone.’ Mrs Hepburn cleared her throat. ‘Well, to tell you the truth, Ernest, I could murder a drop of something and that’s no lie.’
‘Only natural,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘And someone should raise a glass to poor Stanley anyway. No matter what he did. His passing can’t go unmarked.’
Mrs Hepburn closed her eyes and nodded very gravely.
‘Do you really think he did do it?’ I said. Mrs Hepburn opened her eyes again. ‘Can you really believe it of him?’
‘It does you great credit that you can’t, Fanny,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘But he left a note. He confessed to it all.’
‘I wish he had said in his note why he did it,’ I replied. ‘I think I’d be happier if I had any idea why.’
‘Oh Fanny,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘You’ve led a sheltered life if that can puzzle you. The truth is, when one man sets his mind to murder another, there’s no “reason” anywhere to be found.’ I nodded reluctantly and Mr Faulds carried on. ‘I remember a pair of comics on the halls with me,’ he said. ‘Brothers they were – Valentine and Gallagher O’Malley: Vally and Gally. They toured their cross-talk act for twenty-five years until one night in Swansea they came off after their bow and encore and went to their dressing room and Val killed his brother, strangled him with his dressing-gown cord, and then called the stage-door to get the police and put his hands out for the cuffs to go on them. And when the copper asked why he did it he said Gallagher had dropped fag ash in the cold cream once too often.’ Mrs Hepburn tutted and shook her head. ‘Fag ash in the cold cream, Fanny,’ said Mr Faulds, ‘without a word of a lie.’
‘But we don’t even have that much of a reason in this case,’ I said. ‘I know what Stanley said about master, about his cruelty, but it wasn’t true. That’s one thing that’s come out from the police digging around. There’s no reason at all – not a spot of ash or anything.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Mr Faulds. ‘What’s this the police have dug up?’
‘Oh, Ernest, please,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘And you too, Fan. Can’t we just leave it be? I’ll be greetin’ worse than Millie if I have to keep going over it now.’
Mr Faulds, the thought of his beloved in distress taking precedence over everything else, clapped his hands, stood up and announced that he had a bottle of Rémy Martin in his pantry and we were all to go there now and drink to Stanley’s memory. I tried to demur, not wanting to be a gooseberry, but he would not brook a refusal and in the end Mrs Hepburn left before me, fearing that Millie would waken and find herself alone. I meant to follow on her heels, but somehow the time passed and it must have been long after midnight when, full of brandy and music-hall tales and slightly cloudy, I climbed all the way to the top of the house, bade goodnight to Alec and climbed into the little iron bed to join Bunty.
16
Bunty woke me with one of her most luxurious yawns, one which slid down several octaves from a whine to a growl, and I was glad to be wakened; my sleep had been plagued by the kind of unpleasant dreams one cannot quite remember but cannot quite shake off either. Alec called my name and I opened my eyes and gazed around the little room. It was awash with morning light and alive with dancing dust motes at which Bunty started snapping, trampling over the bed without regard to the tender parts of her mistress under her paws.
‘One moment,’ I called back and sat up, shoving Bunty off the bed with my feet. Perhaps it was not a dream, this thing that was nagging at me, but rather something I had forgotten or something I had to do and deep down was dreading. I looked around the room for clues, but I knew even as I did so that it was not that sort of a something, not a watch I had not wound nor a letter I had to answer. After all, I thought, shaking my head, I did not even know if this nagging something was in the past or the future. It was, somehow, neither. It was, in a very odd way, somewhere else entirely. It must, I decided, be a dream after all.
Besides, my work here at 31 Heriot Row was done. It had not been my finest hour. I had suspected Stanley from the start, had watched him, had become more and more sure of his guilt every day and yet had done nothing about it until it was too late to bring him to justice. Even if I had really been Miss Rossiter, Mrs Balfour’s new maid and nothing more, I should have spoken up and told Superintendent Hardy that very first morning to take Stanley in and press the truth out of him. As a so-called detective, supposed to be helping, I could not account for how I could have let it end this way.
There was a soft knock on the door and Alec put his head around it.
‘Dan?’ he said. ‘Are you all right? I can hear you sighing from out here.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Well, of course, actually, no, I’m not fine. I’m kicking myself.’
‘Can’t think why,’ Alec said, ‘but – having slept on it all – have you at least accepted that the mystery is solved and the case is closed?’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I mean, yes, of course.’
‘So we can go home?’
‘Home?’ I repeated. ‘Yes. Yes, I think perhaps I should. This place . . .’ I looked around myself again. What was it?
‘This place what?’ Alec said.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘I feel rather odd this morning, that’s all.’
‘Bad dreams?’
‘That’s probably all it is.’
When he had gone, taking Bunty and Millie with him for a turn around the garden, I made every effort to shake myself. (Nanny Palmer, in full epigrammatic flight, had once shared with me the view that if we spent all our time looking back at yesterday, we would be roundly spanked by tomorrow – and although I had had to suppress my giggles at the time, I had come to see the wisdom.) And perhaps Stanley’s guilt had not really been so very clear at the time as it was now, with the glare of hindsight shining upon it. No! I told myself. Stop that! It was clear. It had been perfectly obvious to me from the start and I would not allow myself to wriggle out of my discomfort by pretending otherwise. Besides, I could not edit my memories to suit myself because I had a record of them.
I laid a hand out and picked the topmost book from where I had left them on my nightstand. My much-ridiculed notebooks, I thought, as I flipped through the pages. There were my first impressions of the household: Lollie – sweet and confused, inclined not to believe her own experiences but rather to cling on to her hopes even in the face of bitter experience to the contrary; Mrs Hepburn – sharp-tongued but good-hearted, kind to her charges and a later note squeezed in – food sent back and tricks played – soup/water, goose/mouse; Eldry – shy, easily frightened, PF foisted attentions against will. Unstable – stains/washing find out more?; and Pip Balfour himself – unassuming, friendly, shirtsleeves! Model yacht!! Hard to see beast L. speaks of. Seems absol. unexceptional & pleasant yg man. Brilliant actor???
Stanley must be further on. Yes, that was right, I had not set down my thoughts about him until after the meeting in the carriage house that day. I picked up a second and a third notebook and found it at last. I turned the page towards the window and began reading.
Stanley. Footman. Smug, boastful (esp. re superior training), ingratiating, hates blood. Hints but knows nothing of import. Hates PB, because father/TB/visit. This had been scored out and changed to: would never pay TB visit – fears blood. Could not stab someone. Conclude: innocent as has always seemed (more’s the pity). I stared at the page in fro
nt of me. I traced the words with my finger and spoke them under my breath. ‘Innocent as has always seemed’?
So where were the notes about my suspicions? About what I had thought of Stanley all along? I got out of bed and walked up and down the bare floor staring at the journal in my hands. How could such lies be there in my book, in my writing, when I had not written them and never would write them, and where was what I had written, what I must have written, about all of his blunders and my growing certainty? I stopped pacing and threw the book down onto the bedcovers.
I was still standing in the middle of the floor when Alec came back to the door again.
‘Dan?’ he said. ‘Are you still in h—?’ He came right into the room and took my arms in his hands. ‘Dandy?’
‘Alec,’ I said, and I was surprised at the smallness of the voice that came out of me. ‘Something is wrong.’ I led him over to the bed and sat him down on it, opening the notebook and laying it on his lap.
‘I didn’t write that,’ I said, pointing.
Alec skimmed the page quickly and then looked up at me.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
Alec shut the book and looked closely at the cover.
‘It’s your book, though, isn’t it? I recognise it.’ I nodded. It was certainly mine. Alec opened it again and peered at the binding. ‘It’s a proper page,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been bodged in with glue. And it’s your writing, darling. I’d know it anywhere. I always said you take too many notes. And now there are so many you can’t even remember writing them. Lesson for next time: less writing.’
I nodded. Writing, I thought. Handwriting. Names signed in writing. I was close to it now; I had almost caught hold of the end of it. And yes! There it was.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Listen to this.’ A will in Pip Balfour’s writing, referring to a cousin no one has ever heard of and a wife who probably did not exist, and bearing the signatures of two women who cannot be found. And a note in Stanley’s writing accusing himself of a crime he could not have committed – because of the blood – and left to prove a suicide he could not have committed – more blood – and now this. A journal entry in my own writing which I did not write, saying things I did not think and omitting things I did.’
Alec whistled.
‘I’m sure I’m right,’ I said. ‘Alec, there’s a forger at the bottom of this.’
‘Hang on, though,’ Alec said. ‘The will, I grant you, is worth forging and the signatures to it, obviously. And the confession. But why would anyone forge a note in your personal papers?’
‘I don’t know why. I’m very confused about things this morning. I feel almost . . . drunk.’
‘Well, you looked at least “almost drunk” when you came up from your cosy time in the pantry last night,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps it hasn’t worn off yet. What were you drinking?’
‘I can’t remember,’ I said, and ignored Alec’s tutting and rolling eyes. ‘But I’m sure about this.’
‘A forger, though,’ he said. ‘I always thought that a forger had to copy what lay before him and that it took long hours of practice and draft after draft to get it right.’
‘So?’
‘Well, just that that would do for a will that could be worked upon in secret for as long as it took to perfect it, but could a forger dash off a suicide note or slip an entry into a journal without a single crossing-out or false step to betray him? It seems more like some kind of party trick or magic turn, not part of a carefully planned murder. Sorry, darling, I think this particular leap of genius can be cured by two aspirin and a prairie oyster.’ He gave me a very unsympathetic grin and left again.
His words, though, had left their mark upon me. Party trick, he had said. Magic turn. Words which sent me scurrying to put on my clothes, drag a brush through my hair and fly down and down and down the four flights, back to the servants’ floor. If anyone had heard of such a thing it would be Mr Faulds, I told myself, for had he not spent the last part of the evening before regaling me with tales of impressionists and ventriloquists, mind readers and spirit writers, and all the ways there were to fool a gaping audience about who one was or where or what one could see or touch or do? If this feat of forgery were possible, then Mr Faulds would surely have come across it somewhere along the way. And besides, the thought of pouring even a little of this out to Mr Faulds was as comforting as a warm blanket and a mug of cocoa. Mr Faulds would help me.
He was at the head of the table, in his waistcoat with a cotton breakfast napkin tucked into his collar against splashes of yolk on his black tie, but he gave me a sunny smile as I rushed in and did not hesitate to follow me out into the passageway when I said I needed a word with him. He ushered me into his pantry with the utmost courtesy and I sat down again on the seat I had occupied the previous evening.
‘It’s about writing,’ I said. ‘Gosh, this is all so muddled. But it just occurred to me that no one who saw the will being written is here to confirm it. And obviously, poor Stanley is not here to say whether he wrote the note that was found beside him, and there’s another thing too – it doesn’t signify but it started me wondering – and I just think that maybe there’s something peculiar about all this suspicious writing of things and I wondered if you had ever heard of anything like that, in your music-hall days. One of these clever tricksters you were talking about last night or something? Could such a thing be done, do you know?’
Mr Faulds was staring at me with his eyes very wide and his mouth just slightly open, but I could see that behind the frozen look on his face his mind was whirring just as fast as mine.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What have you thought of? Has something struck you too? What is it?’
‘What on earth put such an idea into your head?’ said Mr Faulds.
‘Am I right?’ I said. ‘Have I solved it?’
‘Solved it?’ said Mr Faulds. ‘Why on earth would you be looking to solve anything, Fanny?’ He was gazing at me with the oddest expression and I remembered that Fanny Rossiter was not in the business of solving things. He did not seem to disapprove, though. His regard was sorrowful, as though I had filled him with some regretful sadness of some kind.
‘Fanny,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Just listen. I never heard of such a thing. And you can be sure I would have.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Really?’
Mr Faulds tapped his fingers against his cheek and thought hard, but he was soon shaking his head.
‘You must be thinking of the spirit writers I was telling you about. But they had huge sheets of white card and the “spirit pens” – all done with a wire, you know – were great black things that made writing you could see from the back of the gallery.’
‘Oh,’ I said again. ‘I really thought I’d got a hold of something there.’
‘Listen, Fanny,’ he said again. ‘Just hush now and listen to me.’
But before he could go on there was a rap at the door. A spasm of annoyance passed over his face as he barked out permission to enter. It was Eldry, looking startled at his tone.
‘Beg pardon, Mr Faulds,’ she said, ‘but that Osborne, Aunt Goitre’s chauffeur, is asking urgently for Miss Rossiter.’
Mr Faulds looked very slowly between Eldry and me before he replied.
‘You’d better run along then, Fanny my girl. But you need to tell that young man how to behave himself when he’s a guest below stairs in another man’s house. You tell him from me.’
‘He’s in a funny mood this morning,’ said Eldry when the door was shut behind us. I nodded but did not reply. Alec was standing in the open garden doorway, smoking, and turned round when he saw me, throwing his cigarette out onto the grass and starting up the stairs. I followed him. When we were out of Eldry’s earshot I asked him what the trouble was.
‘I was worried about you,’ he said. ‘Phyllis said you came panting in and dragged Mr Faulds from his bacon and eggs and disappeared with him. I didn’t know where you’d got to.’
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br /> We were on the ground floor and I veered off the stairway and into the small back parlour which I knew would be empty once the fire was laid for the day.
‘Never mind where I had got to,’ I said, when we were inside with the door locked behind us, ‘ask me where I’ve got to now. I’ve got a lot further in the last five minutes, I can tell you. I went to ask Mr Faulds about the forgery because last night he was telling me all about card tricksters and voice throwers and people who could guess objects held up in the audience when they were blindfold and all that sort of thing. Now, he was adamant he had never heard of such a thing. He thought long and hard and drew a blank. But I’ve just realised something.’
Alec gave a loud tut and rolled his eyes, for he hates these dramatic pauses when I do them even though he does them himself every chance that comes.
‘Mr Ernest Faulds,’ I went on, ‘has said that he has no singing voice, and has “heard” lots of music-hall songs over the years – “heard”, mind; not “played” – and spoke of comics as though of a separate race and said he had no time for magic acts and is not much of a dancer and in short . . .’
‘In short, has never said outright what it was he did onstage,’ said Alec.
‘Precisely. And did not like it one little bit when I started talking about trick writing. And here’s another thing: one time I teased Faulds about “neglecting his talents” working as a butler instead of treading the boards and he shut down like a trap. I couldn’t understand why I had offended him so, but now I see.’
‘How could forging handwriting make a stage act?’ Alec said.
‘How can card tricks?’ I countered. ‘The question is how can we find out? Or do we just go to Hardy with what we’ve got and tell him Faulds is the man? That he forged the will and the suicide note and killed Pip and Stanley?’
Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains Page 28